Search This Blog

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

2017 IW PQ 1st day 3rd rd

I think I saw Van Uytvanck(who's incidentally one of my favorite players) jogging at the lawn, not sure though.

Thankfully two marquee matches were played side by side at court 9 and 10, thank ye.

But first, had to check Isaeva vs Kaur match which was played at court 20, the opposite end lol.

Impressed with those two. No wonder they defeated Goulak and Peus. Isaeva I think I saw her before, Kaur, not sure. Both sure could attack, employing angles and such. Probably Isaeva served better. Too bad couldn't watch more.

Kratzer def. Mossmer

Never seen Nicole's good serve get attacked so blatantly. Was her serve that bad? Not sure, but maybe Ashley's height helped? Anyway scored numerous winners off service returns. And her drive condition seemed quite good, too, employing angles and producing winners effortlessly(she's a lefty).
Nicole of course employed variety and it wasn't ineffective(which always have been top notch), especially because Ashley responded in kind haha. Dunno why she did it, since she was winning at the baseline anyway; maybe it helped Nicole get her rhythm back? Dunno.
Anyhow the match got tighter later on, but Nicole's errors didn't help.

"Thunder" def. Gordon

Where can I buy a OKC cap lol.
Match was tight because Michaela was very aggressive. And Thunder was strangely passive. Michaela can hit well of course, especially on her bh side. But lots of them, K could return well. So the points were generally quite long, and Michaela in the 1st spewed errors trying to crank up the pace. Still persisted, and probably paid up.
MTB was a bit of a letdown though; after leading 5-2, she kinda imploded committing errors including DF.

Luzhanska def. Zhao

Last match to finish so could watch the last portion.
Duke recruited well, Chen for 2017 then Zhao for 2018. Z no problem rallying with L, bh seemed especially strong.

They didn't update the score on the website, we'll see if they do today. Tomorrow's marquee match should be Kenin vs Sanford, saved Alex's match for this match, naturally will concentrate on this one.
Oh Thunder vs Kratzer should be a good one as well, K definitely has a chance here. The winner will probably meet MLDB in the quarterfinals.
Other possible exciting Quarterfinal match is Hradecka vs Liu.

Hope for a good birding in the morning at Big Morongo tomorrow(thankfully they start the matches at 11am).